Guild Wars 2

We’ve seen a lot of these, but I feel like it’s important to continue to have posts like these in the hope that they will be addressed. The issues are somewhat in order of most importance, #1 being the highest priority imo.

1. Longbow Dependency: Look at the majority of popular Warrior builds: Shoutbow, Hambow, S/S LB Condi, Axebow. Notice the pattern? This problem has multiple layers:

A. Cleansing Ire only activates on a burst skill hitting. If you run double melee, missing a burst skill can be a death sentence. No wonder even after all the nerfs LB is popular when it’s the only weapon that can basically guarantee a cleanse. Traits like Brawler’s Recovery are certainly useful, but even then you’ll probably still need Cleansing Ire for Adrenaline gain because now you have no access to Burst Mastery. Which brings me to another issue…

B. Near-Mandatory traits. Because of how critical Cleansing Ire and Fast Hands are, you’ll almost never see a build without them. That means at least half of your trait points are basically decided for you even start making a build.

Possible Solutions: This would obviously require play testing for balance, but having CI just activate on Adrenaline use (as in spent on a hit or a miss, not on a cancel) instead of only on hit would make Wars less dependent on LB. I’m not normally for rewarding failure, but it’s still way more active of removal than say Empathetic Bond or Purity. Another option would be buffing Brawler’s Recovery to remove Poison or Blind in addition to one other condition. This would give more glassy builds the ability to forgo the Defense trait line in favor of more damage AND would reduce reliance on CI/LB.

As for Fast Hands, if you don’t want it to just be a part of the Warrior class, what about making it the first minor trait in the Discipline line? That’s 2 extra points to put where you want.

2. ONE viable heal. You could maybe argue that Defiant Stance has some situational uses, and the idea behind it is cool, but there’s no denying that Healing Surge and Mending are just bad. Healing Surge is often counterproductive because you end up in a situation where you get bursted right after using all your Adrenaline and now you’ve got a low heal on a long CD. Mending seems like it could be a Godsend for more glassy specs. With Restorative Strength, you basically have a full cleanse at your disposal. The healing is so small though. I’ve tried so many times to make it work, and I always come to the conclusion that Healing Signet is better. In PvP, I think Defiant Stance could use a higher base heal or a lower CD. Anyone with any knowledge will simply stop attacking once they see it activate.

3. Broken Gap Closers: Bull’s Charge, fix it please.

4. Boring Stance Mechanics: Currently, stances are basically Signets with no passive. How is it possible to take up 2 or more stances at once? That would like like a game of Twister gone horribly wrong. They have the potential to be something like Engi kits and be interesting and skillful. I would rather they be more like GW1 where only one stance can be active at a time. To compensate, CDs and durations would of course need to be looked at. Of course, that means Balanced Stance needs to not be a boon, which I suppose would be fair enough because you lose the ability to reduce damage or condi duration but gain unstrippable stability.

The traits that are like stances could probably just stay as they are for the most part. Last Stand gives Stability and Defy Pain activates a trait called “Defy Pain” instead of a stance so that you don’t end up having it turn off another stance. Although, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

5. (Boarderline) Useless Traits: Includes Thrill of the Kill, Short Temper, Powerful Banners, Vigorous Return, Cull The Weak, Sweet Revenge. Some of these have some situational use, but almost never are. There’s also seldom used GM traits like Burst Precision (just use Intel sigil), Last Chance (long ICD for a short burst of quickness, tho can be funny if used with Frenzy and Sigil of Rage and you can get them to not overlap), and Rousing Resilience (although since I think it triggers just for using a stun break skill I could see some funny troll builds).

There’s more, but these are the big one’s imo. Feel free to list your own.

1.) Long Bow right now is balanced because it’s easy to play yet not as rewarding as some DPS builds.

2.) Fast hands isn’t necessary tbh, but it’s a really good trait BECAUSE the strongest Warrior build just happened to use Mace. And Mace requires fast hands.

3.) It’s really sad that you don’t see the complexity with stances for a guy who played Warrior “since launch.” If you burn two stances, you need to make sure you’re good at baiting two of theirs. You can even do it with one stance if you’re good with mace I guess. Granted that this is hard but this should be visible to people who are attached to the class. It’s a “cancelling out” thing, it is not simply press defensive mechanics and call it skill.

4.) I agree with Bulls Charge needing love. A cool down reduction or a range increase or a damage increase. ANYTHING.

5.) If they make Cleansing Ire cleanse conditions when adrenaline depletes and even when burst skills miss, then you just made Warrior braindead much like Guardian, Ranger, and Ele right now. People eventually want to play something which requires effort the moment they become good at the game.

Also DPS builds can out-damage conditions anyways if you’re good with zerk stance is running. Granted that people have already learned how to count dodges and bait cool downs.

6.) You want to buff Brawlers recovery? I can understand blinds though reckless dodge is already good for that, but poison? The challenge should be “how do I manipulate condi removal and cleanse poison to keep myself sustained.” Not press tab and win and then call it skill.

The only realistic change that I’d want to see “trait-wise” is that thick skin should be something else like “Immune to blind once every 20 seconds.”

BlackTruth.6813, I’ve tried some of your builds, and I just wholeheartedly disagree with your build philosophy in many areas. The builds are very often carried by how good Rampage is now. That Axe/Mace Hammer build has one good chain of CC with decent damage but overall feels worse than a well played Mediguard (another spec I play often).

It’s not that what you run is bad, but that another class can generally do something similar but better. I like Skullcracker because it can do things that no other class can do. It baits out stun breakers and also has the ability to do the longest stun in the game, allowing you and your damage dealers to focus down problem targets. Having a GS allows you to take advantage of this stun and you get good roaming potential. Also, I prefer my stability to be on demand for stomping.

How is Cleansing Ire any less brainless with a bow than with double melee except that with double melee you can be screwed over by the other person lagging or Earthshaker deciding that the terrain is just a bit too uneven. The change would just be a hedge against factors out of your control.

Having BR remove poison would be a way to counter the over popularity of sigil of Doom (which is a far bigger crutch than anything I’ve suggested) without having to nerf the sigil itself. Taking it with CI would be pointless because you would already be OK on the removal front, it would just be a way to get you out of the Defense line if you want to.

IMO Stances are mechanically boring and not complex in the least. You try to avoid needed the stance, then you use it at the right time, don’t oversell the complexity there.

BurrTheKing.8571:

4. Boring Stance Mechanics: Currently, stances are basically Signets with no passive. How is it possible to take up 2 or more stances at once? That would like like a game of Twister gone horribly wrong. They have the potential to be something like Engi kits and be interesting and skillful. I would rather they be more like GW1 where only one stance can be active at a time. To compensate, CDs and durations would of course need to be looked at. Of course, that means Balanced Stance needs to not be a boon, which I suppose would be fair enough because you lose the ability to reduce damage or condi duration but gain unstrippable stability.

I agree, i wish it was more similar to gw1 mechanics, activating a 2nd stance should cancel the 1st one. i know its a fantasy game, but in all honesty, in real life, you can only do 1 stance at a time, be it a martial arts stance or some form of dance.

the current mechanic makes it so that Ralph Macchio could do the crane stance while simultaneously performing crouching tiger; hidden dragon all in one go, which is impossible. im sure jayden smith might be able to do that because he thinks that he is gods gift to humanity, lol, but thats another story for another time.

personally, i would like to see stances reworked as our F1 things, possibly, almost like the ele attunements/guardian F abilities. more so like Aion’s Gladiator class or WoW warrior things, iirc (been a long time since i played wow).

maybe upon activation of the stance F ability, begin adrenaline degeneration, once adren is gone, the stance stops. the decay would have to be a little to a lot greater than adrenaline gain in order to manage that.

possibly Keep F1 Burst

F2 Balanced Stance, apply stability (3s per FULL adren bar, max 9 seconds, or additional 1 second with the trait no one uses) to allies in group and self, until adren runs out (or you burst with f1) (or Consumes ALL Adrenaline, and gives 3 sec of stability per full adrenaline bar. Reuse Timer: 40-80 seconds

F2 Berserker stance (maybe chance it to Stalwart stance), applies only to you, provides same as current form Reuse Timer: 60-90 seconds

F3 Endure Pain (chance to Testudo stance) immune to phsyical damage for 4 seconds, consumes ALL adrenaline, (maybe apply to group, maybe not) Reuse Timer: 60-90 seconds

just throwing ideas off the top of my head. or something could be done similar to other warrior gw1 stances that Cost adrenaline such as rush in gw1

I think that they should nerf warrior more. It’s kind of kitten play other classes when you always think how much better warrior would have been in same situation.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Stuff

1, 2. The longbow dependancy is real, but your solutions are not the right direction IMO. CI to proc just on spending adrenaline? That’s awful and braindead indeed. Brawler’s Recovery is already strong as is, and if you could combine it with some other decent condi removal, CI is no longer mandatory for condition cleansing.

The real problem here is that there is no trait that can actually provide for you what CI can; condition cleansing and adrenaline gain. If you can forgo CI’s condi cleansing by taking BR and, say, Signet of Stamina, then you still need to get adrenaline build up. But you already spent 6 trait points and a utility to cover one of the two…

So what we need, is a low investment way to get better condition cleansing. The most obvious way here would be to finally buff Mending, and buff it good. Make it a Physical skill that’s affected by the Strength CD reduction trait. A 16 second cooldown would mean a ~320 HPS healing skill if you use it off cooldown (which you won’t, so actual healing will be less). Now, you can pick up Restorative Strength, and go 6 into Strength while maintaining ways to sustain yourself against conditions. This also somewhat adresses your second point.

About Fast Hands, this trait is just too good to pass up unless you spec into some boring condi shout horror. Making it the Adept minor trait would definitely be a step into the right direction, but the incredible wave of QQ is incredible. If this would be a class mechanic, even worse. You would probably end up having to nerf warrior in other areas as they could now spend trait points better (thus becoming overall more powerful). Still, that would be a tradeoff I’d be willing to make.

2. We need to realise that not all skills can be viable in all game modes. If one would buff Mending like I mentioned, why would you use it in PvE? Same goes for Defiant Stance, aside from some trollish stuff, it just has no place in PvP. Whereas in PvE, and surely in WvW large scale battles, it is a great skill to have.
Healing Surge is a problem though, as it isn’t viable anywhere. You can not even use it to get full adrenaline before you enter a fight as you instantly lose it all again. They broke quite a few traits and skills with the adrenaline butchering, and they still didn’t fix them. But HS was bad before that. The mechanic is interesting but, in it’s current form, badly executed.

3. My estimate is that another 40+ topics must be made about this before it gets fixed.

4. Stances are fine IMO. Easy and unchallenging, but you can not easily turn this into something challenging without breaking stances alltogether. And unstrippable stability seems like a bad idea.

5. Agree for the most part. They should start with the GM traits being so bad. I mean, you would take Burst Precision to save you from using an intelligence sigil and getting the benefit of versatility in when you use your burst skill (and still get the crit). Is this worth sacrificing 6 trait points/Berserker’s Power over? Don’t think so.

Short Temper is fine IMO though. Granted, situational, but in those situations it is an insane trait. Really helps to cut through bunkers.

The thing is, there might be disagreement on this or that detail or we might dislike each other builds but all seasoned warrior have known this list of issues since forever.

like, really, let’s look it up, how many times have this list been made?

it’s nothing new to most of us but arenanet keeps missing opportunities to do something good and instead nerf 100b damage from time to time because that ought to do it. (they did sort of fix rush a bit however and that’s cool)

after they butchered adrenaline CI dependency become much stronger than what we had before, give us back a healthier class mechanic (because right now adrenaline is pretty bad) first then we can start with the fine-tuning i say.

After seeing the OP complain about literally every single thing in dueling servers from thieves to “vanishing” pin downs when he shoots it into Elementalist swirling winds, not realizing it destroys projectiles…To lag and “living in the middle of nowhere”…I had a strong feeling I would see a post by this same said person complaining on forums…

Lo and behold! Boy, was I right…

Can you go a day without complaining about something? Seriously, you’re already garnering a reputation on dueling servers as “The complainer”. You literally have an excuse every duel. Just say “GF” and move onto the next one. God.

Lettuce.2945:

After seeing the OP complain about literally every single thing in dueling servers from thieves to “vanishing” pin downs when he shoots it into Elementalist swirling winds, not realizing it destroys projectiles…To lag and “living in the middle of nowhere”…I had a strong feeling I would see a post by this same said person complaining on forums…

Lo and behold! Boy, was I right…

Can you go a day without complaining about something? Seriously, you’re already garnering a reputation on dueling servers as “The complainer”. You literally have an excuse every duel. Just say “GF” and move onto the next one. God.

Oh look, it’s the guy who lies about what happened!

There were no winds, no dodges, no blocks, the Pin Down fired directly into the ground TWICE in a row the second fight. Oh, and after I won the first fight they said “I’ll play for real now” and “I haven’t played Ele in six months.” Yes, the guy who QQ’d about “excuses” literally started off with excuses.

Oh they also spam messaged me. They. Sent. Me. Messages. With. One. Word. Per. PM. Till. I. Got. Annoyed. Of. The. Beeping, and eventually blocked him.

Also, it’s pretty well known in those servers that “Old Man Burr” is a persona. Most find it pretty funny. A group of us are refining our builds or simply enjoy playing bad builds because it’s funny, Meanwhile you get mad about EVERYTHING, gank, and then you do the very thing you complain about.

Anyways, I’m not here to throw mud, so just like in game, I’ll be ignoring you now.

Burr, it’s always sad for me to return to the forum literally a year later, and see almost an identical post to some of the ones others posted a year ago. Looks like the War class hasn’t gotten a lot of love.

Dand.8231:

Burr, it’s always sad for me to return to the forum literally a year later, and see almost an identical post to some of the ones others posted a year ago. Looks like the War class hasn’t gotten a lot of love.

I’d really wish Anet would just spend one patch fixing broken traits but instead we keep getting gem store updates.

BurrTheKing.8571:

Lettuce.2945:

After seeing the OP complain about literally every single thing in dueling servers from thieves to “vanishing” pin downs when he shoots it into Elementalist swirling winds, not realizing it destroys projectiles…To lag and “living in the middle of nowhere”…I had a strong feeling I would see a post by this same said person complaining on forums…

Lo and behold! Boy, was I right…

Can you go a day without complaining about something? Seriously, you’re already garnering a reputation on dueling servers as “The complainer”. You literally have an excuse every duel. Just say “GF” and move onto the next one. God.

Oh look, it’s the guy who lies about what happened!

There were no winds, no dodges, no blocks, the Pin Down fired directly into the ground TWICE in a row the second fight. Oh, and after I won the first fight they said “I’ll play for real now” and “I haven’t played Ele in six months.” Yes, the guy who QQ’d about “excuses” literally started off with excuses.

Oh they also spam messaged me. They. Sent. Me. Messages. With. One. Word. Per. PM. Till. I. Got. Annoyed. Of. The. Beeping, and eventually blocked him.

Also, it’s pretty well known in those servers that “Old Man Burr” is a persona. Most find it pretty funny. A group of us are refining our builds or simply enjoy playing bad builds because it’s funny, Meanwhile you get mad about EVERYTHING, gank, and then you do the very thing you complain about.

Anyways, I’m not here to throw mud, so just like in game, I’ll be ignoring you now.

You lost three times in a row to a zerker ele after I said I’ll play for real. You started to QQ about “vanishing” pin downs, how I was cele when I was zerker…Etc. You always complain about every thing in every duel. Even when I’m not dueling you, I’ve seen you complain to everyone every time you lose a duel. It’s always some kind of excuse. And I just mentioned that I didn’t play ele for 6 months to add salt to your wound. It wasn’t a form of QQ. I was insulting you for losing to a zerker ele that hasn’t played on it in 6 months. Let that sink in.

No, seriously, learn how to say gf even after you lose and do another duel. Instead of writing paragraphs about why you lost. You seem to have this notion that “bugs” only happens to you and you only. You talked kitten to my guildie for beating you on his thief and how he was a something to do with a woman’s sensitive area…Then he hopped on his warrior and dueled you mirror spec…What happened? You lost 3 times in a row. You got humbled real quick.

And you blocked me after like 20 minutes of talking to me about why you lost without me responding. When you finally realized I wasn’t responding to you because I thought it was immature…You said “Ok, I’m done with you. Blocked”. As if I was even talking to you L O L. You went on a monologue for 20 minutes like an idiot then tell me you’re done with me? Ok kiddo. Ok.

BurrTheKing.8571:

snip

Lettuce.2945:

snip again

OP has a point.

If anything the easiest to fix would be Bull’s Charge. Just fix it already.

Dand.8231:

Burr, it’s always sad for me to return to the forum literally a year later, and see almost an identical post to some of the ones others posted a year ago. Looks like the War class hasn’t gotten a lot of love.

We were THE meta for a while, but rather than making small shaves, they went and chopped off our magnificent beard!

I would have been OK with the adrenaline changes, if they had also adjusted adrenaline gain to compensate.

We’re now in the “good, but not great” category if you want to say, fill the same role a Mediguard or Teef does. I had decent success with Hammer/GS 00626 though. Hammer is still a solid weapon.